As Riding Easy Records’ highly successful Brown Acid series (now at 10 volumes and counting) proves, there is a massive amount of incredible heavy psych and proto-metal music that has been lost to the sands of time. Case in point, the astoundingly great 50- year-old album The Ice Age by Indianapolis quintet Ice was never even released upon its completion.

The Ice Age is an exceptional archive of hard edged rock with serious pop hooks akin to something like Grand Funk Railroad meets The Guess Who and The Move. It rocks hard, but is also interlaced with glorious melodic hooks. Had fate been less fickle, this album would’ve long been a classic rock radio staple.

Album opener Gypsy is a chiming Byrds-like rocker, with glistening 12-string guitar, organ and somewhat over-zealous vibra-slap. Satisfy and 3 O’Clock In The Morning nicely pair up as the most pop friendly tunes, but with very clever melodies and structures sounding ahead of their time, the latter with an extended entrancing and droning refrain led by shimmering organ run through a Leslie speaker. Running High and Catch You were the two tracks released in ’72 under a different band name, which received considerable local radio airplay. And, for good reason: Their nice balance of
wayward psychedelic pop and troglodyte thunder is exactly what makes The Ice Age so
captivating. Album closer Song of The East shares the growling glissando and orchestral style that made Vanilla Fudge and The Moody Blues household names.